Step back in time

Everything old is new again.

Don’t get too excited, kids. This seems to do the rounds every few years, with retro-cool, vintage fashion and camp-kitsch often stimulating consumer choices. We often turn to eras gone by, with previous decades regenerating and popping up in architecture, lifestyle, design and music.

I’m no fashion expert, but I hear the ’80s are back, heaven forbid. There are some things I think we all agree should never make a return. The piano tie and mullet come to mind, although stranger things have happened.

We’ve just done another ’70s thing too, haven’t we? Big-ass hoop earrings and afros returned, Madonna flaunted the Farrah-flick, we’ve been back to Funky Town and Xanadu, and our disco still needs us.

But it’s always a bit of a buzz watching artists rejuvenate themselves and their craft, right?

Kylie and Madonna have often drawn on yesteryear, and both incarnated the dynamic Donna Summer in recent times, with I Feel Love still proving a winner. Kylie threw The Sound of Music and Boy George into her Fever show with Crying Game, and Madge is renowned for morphing into Monroe, burning with Fever and mashing-up a Bee Gees classic with the Travoltaesque Music Inferno.

ABBA energises dancing queens around the globe, Janet Jackson channelled Joni Mitchell with Got -˜til It’s Gone and Rihanna reminded us Jacko lives on with Don’t Stop the Music. Another of my fave choons, Thriller by Allstars, is très similar to the original MJ version, only tweaked for millennial dance floors. The list goes on, but even classical luminaries like Mozart and Beethoven have fierce bootleg tracks to ignite your disco stick.

Beyonce brought curves back, it’s rained men more than once, and the multitude of Australian Idol hopefuls belting out Aretha Franklin never ceases to amaze me. And did Amy Winehouse breathe new life into the beehive? Or is she still blaming it on the boogie?

Just ask any DJ or drag queen about retro-inspiration.

Infamous drag duo Cindy Pastel and Miss 3D, for example, are stepping back in time with a popular new show that draws on bygone divas. Inspiration was Judy and Liza, as Miss 3D is like my Mumma, Cindy told SSO. And Miss 3D concurs, saying, Judy is divine to mime.

Sounds like the girls just wanna have fun and strike a pose somewhere over the rainbow, if you ask me.